There are more things in heaven and earth

June 25, 2011

I feel obligated to say how the "eating more food" experiment is going-- even though, as it turns out, I can't really stomach eating more food.

I do feel better when I eat right after waking up, as Matt Stone recommends. And I do feel better when I eat more frequently, and when I eat more calories in a day. And, interestingly, when I'm eating more I'm actually hungrier. The more I eat, the hungrier I am. Some days, though, I have no desire to eat anything, period.

After two months of trying hard to eat more food, I have not gained any weight nor do any of my pants feel tighter. I'm beginning to believe that homeostasis -- your body's ability to maintain the status quo -- is a hell of a powerful force. If you want to eat more, eat less, lose weight, or gain weight, well... good frickin' luck. [Edit: I mean while eating healthy food. And by "healthy" I mean "existed 150 years ago".] I'll keep trying, because as I said, when I eat more I feel better. And it seems to have no effect on how I look or how much I weigh, in total contradiction to what's "supposed" to happen.

I suppose I need to try exercising in order to generate more of an appetite, but it doesn't necessarily work that way if you're low on T3 thyroid hormone, as I am. Unless it's very gentle exercise it runs the risk of actually slowing down your metabolism. When you're hypothyroid, instead of your catecholamines signaling "Woo-hoo! Exercise! Let's speed up that metabolism!" they instead signal "Whoa... let's just slow the hell down here, what is this, the chain gang? Take that metabolism as low as she'll go." I oversimplify, but that's the gist. Since millions of people are low in T3 even though their doctors (who don't look at T3) say their thyroid function is normal, there are thus millions of people who exercise in total misery without losing any weight at all (in fact, they might gain weight). Additionally, exercise releases cortisol, and plenty of Americans, me included, already have sky-high cortisol levels. High cortisol exacerbates the thyroid issue.

On a somewhat related note, you know how, stereotypically, virtually all women think they need to lose 5 pounds of fat? Well, here is an actual picture (courtesy the batty.us site), using an anatomical model, of what five pounds of fat would look like. It's that disgusting yellow stuff next to her thigh:

Okayyy... that's way the hell more volume than I would've thought. And it's pretty clear that a lot of normal-sized women obsessed with losing weight are actually losing muscle, not fat, because they don't actually have 5 or 10 extra pounds of fat on them. (We're supposed to have some fat, obviously; I'm talking about clearly extraneous fat.) Women who are trying to starve the fat off themselves are facing lost strength, osteoporosis, mineral imbalances, slowed digestion, slowed metabolism, thyroid and cortisol problems, and fatigue.

I think "calories in, calories out" is a very pernicious myth, and particularly harmful to women. It's not that simple, and if mainstream medicine weren't so zealously puritanical about diet and exercise, they might begin to understand that.